in Italy, he died at Gaeta 303. At Naples and other places he is honoured as S. Elmo. 9. S. Eustachius, originally called Placidus, a Roman officer, converted while hunting by meeting a stag which carried a refulgent cross between its horns; his subsequent reverses, his loss of wife and children, the wonderful meeting with them again, and the agency of animals throughout, make his one of the most romantic of legends. 10. S. George. 11. S. Catherine of Alexandria. 12. S. Margaret. 13. S. Pantaleone, another student of medicine; when, after many tortures, he was finally beheaded, the legend tells us that, in token of the purity of his life, milk flowed from his veins instead of blood, A.D. 380. 14. S. Vitus, a Sicilian, instructed by a slave, who was his nurse, in the Christian faith in his early years; his father’s endeavours to root out his belief were unavailing, and he suffered A.D. 303, at not more than twelve years of age. The only link I can discover in this chain of saints is that they are all but one or two, whose alleged end I do not know, as S. Christopher, credited with having suffered a plurality of terrible martyrdoms. To each is of course ascribed the patronage over some special one of the various phases of human suffering.
40
P. 12.
41
Among these not the least remarkable were some specimens of the unbrimmed beaver hat, somewhat resembling the Grenadier’s bear-skin, only shorter, which is worn by the women in various parts of Tirol and Styria.
42
The bell called in other countries the
43
The threefold invocation, supposed to be supremely efficacious.
44
In Tirol the roofs are frequently made of narrow overlapping planks, weighed down by large stones. Hence the origin of the German proverb, ‘If a stone fall from the roof, ten to one but it lights on a poor widow;’ – equivalent to our ‘Trouble never comes alone.’
45
‘May God reward it.’
46
The frontispiece to this volume (very much improved by the artist who has drawn it on the wood).
47
Of the Brixenthal and the Gebiet der grossen Ache we shall have to speak in a later chapter, in our excursion ‘from Wörgl to Vienna.’
48
The comparative mythologist can perhaps tell us why this story crops up everywhere. I have had occasion to report it from Spain in
49
S. Leonard is reckoned the patron of herds. See
50
Anna Maria Taigi, lately beatified in Rome, was also a maid-servant.
51
I have throughout the story reconciled, as well as I could, the various versions of every episode in which local tradition indulges. One favourite account of Ottilia’s end, however, is so different from the one I have selected above, that I cannot forbear giving it also. It represents Ottilia rushing in despair from her bed and wallowing in the enclosure of the pigs, whence, with all Henry’s care, she could not be withdrawn alive. All the strength of his retainers was powerless to restrain the beasts’ fury, and she was devoured, without leaving a trace behind; only that now and then, on stormy nights, when the pigs are grunting over their evening meal, some memory of their strange repast seems to possess them, and the wail of Ottilia is heard resounding hopelessly through the valley.
52
Grimm has collected (
53
It is perhaps to be reckoned among the tokens of Etruscan residence among the Rhætian Alps, for Mr. Isaac Taylor finds that the word belongs to their language. (
54
‘Hulda was supposed to delight in the neighbourhood of lakes and streams; her glittering mansion was under the blue waters, and at the hour of mid-day she might be seen in the form of a beautiful woman bathing and then disappearing.’ – Wolf,
55
One version of the legend says, the Frozen Wall was formed out of the quantities of butter the people had wasted.
56
This excursion was made on occasion of a different journey from that mentioned in Chapter i. Of course, if taken on the way from Kufstein to Innsbruck, you would take the Wildschönau
57
Whoever comes into the Zillerthal is sure to visit it a second time.
58
In the Vintschgau (see
59
‘Kaspar my name: from the East I came: I came thence with great speed: five thousand miles in fourteen days: Melchior, step in.’ Zingerle gives a version of the whole set of rimes.
60
See
